Scott Wykoff's Blog

Monday, September 8, 2008

Post Convention Polls

After spending two straight weeks with the Democratic faithful in Denver, on the Obama bus tour , and then with the Republican supporters in St. Paul, it's time now to get a handle on how it all played out across America.When you're on the inside like I was for so long it was hard to get a real feel for how all the speeches were playing outside the convention halls.

While voters will have the final say in 57 days when they go to the polls, the post-convention polls are having their say right now. A pair of post Republican National Convention polls show the McCain/Palin ticket with a lead now on the Obama/Biden ticket. Some are calling it the post-convention bump for the GOP that has overtaken the post-convention bump enjoyed briefly by the Democrats.

Have you been polled yet during the campaign?

McCain leads Obama 46 percent to 44 percent in the latest CBS News poll, which was taken in the three days following the completion of the parties' nominating conventions.

A USA Today-Gallup poll of national presidential race among registered voters, shows McCain with a 50 percent to 46 percent lead now on Barack Obama. Like the CBS Poll, this poll shows McCain getting a substantial bounce after the Republican National Convention, overcoming a 7-percentage-point Obama lead before the convention began in St. Paul, Minn., last week. The addition of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to the Republican ticket led 29 percent of voters to say they were more likely to vote for McCain, while 21 percent said they were less likely.

The CBS poll marks the first time that McCain, whose two-point lead is within the poll's margin of error, has led Obama in CBS News general election polling.

Obama led McCain by three points in a CBS News/New York Times survey released on August 20th, just before the political conventions, and led by 8 points in CBS News polling just after the Democratic National Convention. A CBS News survey conducted last week found the two candidates tied.